Snake Eyes - Softcover

Smith, Rosamond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451403827 ISBN 13: 9780451403827

Publisher: Onyx, 1993

Synopsis

Lovely blonde Gina O'Meara had seemingly the ideal life--a devoted husband, two well-behaved children, a comfortable home--but something draws her to magnetic, evil ex-con Lee Roy Sears. Reprint.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

This latest gothic potboiler from the thinly veiled Joyce Carol Oates pits a wide-eyed suburban lawyer and his oh-so-perfect family against the convicted murderer who comes to live in their hometown when he's served the eight years of his ``life sentence.'' Though he's never met tattooed Vietnam vet Lee Roy Sears, Michael O'Meara was instrumental five years earlier in getting his original death sentence commuted to life, and he's kept up a correspondence (much to his beautiful, decorously promiscuous wife Gina's dismay) that encourages Sears to set up shop as a supposedly gifted sculptor in Mount Orion, New Jersey. To Michael's surprise, Gina warms to Sears immediately, buying him new clothes and feeding him (in violation of his parole) ``dry white wine, very low in calories''--so Michael's able to ignore telltale signs of trouble (was that Gina he glimpsed getting fondled roughly by Sears? And was that his TV newshound sister Janet arriving at Sears's place late one night?) until trouble erupts in paradise when the backers of the gallery employing Sears banish him and his obscenely deformed clay figures. Then, a string of fireworks: those inconvenient backers both die (a suspicious fire, an apparent burglary); Sears turns on the O'Mearas and begins threatening them by phone; Gina is attacked with a razor that leaves her hideously scarred; and Michael goes after Sears, determined to kill or be killed. A long epilogue furnishes a final plot twist that Smith has thumpingly portended for any readers who may have missed Lives of the Twins (1987). Slick, professional, and utterly predictable--it reads like a sly and expert parody of the whole psycho-menace genre. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal

Under the pen name Rosamond Smith ( Nemesis, LJ 7/90), Joyce Carol Oates has written a creepy psychological thriller that seems at first to be about the effect a paroled convict has on a "perfect" Amer ican family and the suburban New York community in which they live. Michael O'Meara is a lawyer who helps get con victed murderer Lee Roy Sears's death sentence commuted to life in prison. When the "rehabilitated" Sears is re leased, Michael gets him a job and invites him, over the objections of his wife, home to dinner. Sears's destructiveness and hatred of women is soon all too obvious to the reader, but it is O'Meara, devoted husband and father, who is the more disturbing character. O'Meara's manner of "protecting" his wife is as frightening as Sears's malevolence, and the novel's horrifying conclusion leaves the reader wondering who the real criminal is. This is disturbing, gripping, and memorable to read.
- Eliza beth Mellett, Brookline P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Onyx
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0451403827
• ISBN 13: 9780451403827
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352